First Quarter

Not so quietly

STAB’s Montgomery-DeLaurier goes national... with help By Bart Isley

B

St. Anne’s Montgomery-DeLaurier squares up for a shot against Blue Ridge. (Ashley Thornton)

{ MORE THAN DUNKS } Montgomery-DeLaurier is no one trick pony. Here’s his line just a few weeks into the season.

22.8

REBOUNDS

10.8 K AR A EL DER

POINTS

ASSISTS

4.8

BLOCKS

3.4

05 :: @scrimmageplay

y now you’ve probably seen the dunk that St. Anne’s-Belfield junior Javin Montgomery-DeLaurier unleashed against Collegiate Friday, December 16. If you haven’t, Google and type in “Javin Montgomery-DeLaurier dunk” and search.

ESPN and Bleacher Report are the top the results. At 77,000 views and counting on YouTube as of December 16, you don’t want to miss out. While the dunk is just fantastic and emblematic of the already highly-regarded MontgomeryDeLaurier’s incredible start to 2014-2015, how it became a viral hit in just a couple of days is equally interesting. It’s also a testament to a supportive environment at STAB and the relentlessness of one videographer. “I’m getting texts nonstop throughout the day,” said STAB boys basketball coach Brian Kent. “He’s watching the stats all day.” “He” is Anand Prahash, a junior who has emerged as St. Anne’s-Belfield’s sports video czar, creating movies along with his friend Trevor Chase of the various athletics teams and compiling them as highlight packages often with some serious music, inventive camera angles, wireless microphone footage, the works. That all started because Prahash felt like three people shooting still pictures for the yearbook at a football game was too much of the same thing. “I never really liked being the guy who was doing what everybody else was doing, so I switched my camera to video,” Prahash said. He hasn’t stopped since. They’ve developed seasonal montages featuring each sport from fall, winter or spring that have found an audience during community forum time at STAB and he and Chase even completed a non-sports documentary project about STAB’s Silver Lining Blood Drive. Prahash is self-taught, picking up the skills he needed through trial and error and simply continuing to work hard at mastering the software and the tools of the trade. He also had significant encouragement from a lot of different people, specifically several faculty members at STAB.

“They really realized the potential in me and helped me see that I could take this to the next level,” Prahash said. Which all brought Prahash and a bunch of sports fans across the nation together in mid-December. Prahash himself didn’t really realize what a spectacular play it was until after the game when classmates started telling him he had to get the play on YouTube right away. Someone who was taking statistics for Collegiate also stepped in and explained some of the process to get a play on ESPN.com as he’d done so during the fall. With a little bit of guidance in hand, Prahash just took things and ran with it. “He was on a mission,” Kent said. “He had the video done two hours after the game. Once it hit Bleacher Report it just got crazy.” It found its way to Bleacher Report after a social media assault that started with Prahash’s personal account. That web widened to include VantageHoops.com, Scrimmage Play and STAB alum and St. Louis Rams defensive end Chris Long. Around 11 a.m. Monday morning, Bleacher Report picked it up and it was like pouring gasoline on a fire. From there Prahash, his friends and the STAB community turned their sights on ESPN, reaching out in a variety of ways, including posting it on any and all ESPN Facebook posts. An ESPN employee eventually asked for permission to use the video and it was on the site’s homepage by Wednesday. “It’s a very daunting task and we just kept harassing them,” Prahash said. “It’s all about not relenting. You have to get it out there.” Mission accomplished. ✖

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